


in a suburban war

by Lake (beyond_belief)



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-15
Updated: 2011-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-15 16:53:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/pseuds/Lake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rest of the conversation is a blur. Eduardo yells, and Mark yells back even though he rarely raises his voice, and then Eduardo asks, "What did you mean get left behind?", and Mark pushes him into the bedroom, fingertips pressing on Eduardo's rain-soaked coat, and shuts the door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in a suburban war

“Mr. Saverin,” Sy says, as Mark finishes his third Mountain Dew of the day, “did you monitor the bank account, while Mark and the others were in Palo Alto?”

“I did.”

Mark watches Marilyn hand Sy a folder of bank records, arming him in case Gretchen decides to argue. “So you saw exactly where all the money was going?”

“Yes, sir. The rent was the largest payment, followed by the servers. The interns got a small stipend every week.”

“And you had no argument with that?”

“I had no argument with that.”

“Did Mr. Zuckerberg ever write himself a check?”

Eduardo shakes his head. “No.”

Mark draws a dollar sign on his legal pad, and begins to doodle in embellishments around it. Sy asks some other questions about California. Mark ignores them. There’s nothing really for Eduardo to say about California, and they both know it.

“... flew from the city out to SFO in June,” Eduardo is saying.

“And what happened then?” Sy prods, sounding bored. Mark stifles a yawn behind his hand, rolling his eyes. He’d tried to tell Eduardo, back in the summer house. It wasn’t his fault that Eduardo had completely missed the point.

Eduardo launches into his version of events. Mark stops listening.

*

He’s groggy from sleep when he hears the front door close loudly, and then voices. Not voices he’s used to hearing in the house. Eduardo’s voice. Arguing with Sean. _Shit._

Mark rolls out of the bed and walks barefoot into the living room, distracting Eduardo from his fight with Sean (all they do is argue, he doesn’t get it, why are they always arguing? It makes no sense), wanting to show him The Wall and stealing Dustin’s candy, and somehow ending up in the back hallway with Eduardo staring at him accusingly as they talk.

Really, there’s no need for Eduardo to look at him like that. They’re here, and he’s not.

“Did you hear what I just said?” Eduardo demands.

He doesn’t think Eduardo’s getting it. “The connections, the energy -”

“Mark, you got -”

“I’m afraid if you don’t come out here, you’re gonna get left behind,” he says, making himself say it calmly, for Eduardo, meeting Eduardo’s gaze full-on. Something that might be hurt flashes across Eduardo’s face, and suddenly, Mark wants to tell the truth. Can’t help but tell him the truth, and it tumbles out.

“I want - I need - I need you out here,” he murmurs, spinning the licorice fast between his fingers, all too conscious of Sean out in the living room a few feet away, all too conscious that someone might be trying to listen in on this conversation.“Please don’t tell him I said that.”

“What did you just say?”

“It’s moving faster than any of us ever imagined it would. It’s moving fast. And Sean thinks that we -”

The rest of the conversation is a blur. Eduardo yells, and Mark yells back even though he rarely raises his voice, and then Eduardo asks, “What did you mean get left behind?”, and Mark pushes him into the bedroom, fingertips pressing on Eduardo’s rain-soaked coat, and shuts the door.

“You’re not here,” he hisses, spreading his hands, as though gesturing will get his point across.

“Mark -”

“You’re not here, and we need your signature on things, and you don’t get to them fast enough.” He’s breathing heavily and whoa, the Twizzler stub is melting in his palm. He stares at it, annoyed, and then licks it off because he doesn’t know what else to do. Eduardo is staring at him in what could be disbelief. “Wardo -”

“What do you mean I don’t get to them fast enough?”

“We need more money than you can bring in with advertisers in New York,” he says, and it’s a struggle to keep his voice even. But he does, because this is Eduardo, this is his best friend, and it’s not like he wants to make Eduardo feel like Mark is ignoring the fact that he’s _trying_.

He knows Eduardo’s trying. It’s just - the wrong way.

Eduardo’s hand lifts. Mark watches as it curls in his shirt collar. “I - what?” He looks at Mark with wide eyes, then sinks down onto the bed, pulling Mark down with him. “Mark?”

Mark shakes his head. Not at Eduardo, really, but more at how he’s not entirely sure what to say right now. “We need more money,” he repeats, willing Eduardo to get it, to understand.

“More than I can bring in?”

“Yes.”

Eduardo stares at him, long enough that Mark begins to feel uncomfortable and starts to fidget, pulling on the hem of his t-shirt, shuffling his bare feet against the floor.

“The company is here,” he says. The carpet is scratchy under his toes. “I need a business advisor who’s _here_.”

Eduardo takes a huge breath and exhales slowly, his own Eduardo code for ‘I’m thinking’. Then he falls backwards onto the mattress, next to Mark’s laptop, and stares up at the ceiling. “All right.”

Mark inhales, feeling the sharp wave of satisfaction. “The couch is still free most nights, I can tell Ian he has to take it. Or you can share with me. This bed is big enough. Do you want to call Christy right now, or -” Eduardo will probably need one more trip back to New York to get his stuff, so he could tell Christy then, but then he’ll be back here.

“What? No, that wasn’t what I - I’m not moving out here, Mark.”

Mark stares at him. That doesn’t make sense. This is where Facebook is, this is where Eduardo should be. Perhaps he misheard.

“I’m not moving out here,” Eduardo says again, and Mark realizes he hadn’t heard wrong. “Aren’t you coming back to school?”

Mark tips his head back and looks up. The ceiling isn’t all that interesting. There’s a water stain in one corner, but it looks like it’s been there a while and is probably not their fault. He doesn’t want to deal with Eduardo’s not-moving statement right now. “What do you mean, Christy’s crazy?”

Eduardo makes a huge gesture with his hands, smacking Mark in the arm with his right. It hurts. “I mean that she thinks if she doesn’t know where I am twenty-four hours a day, she starts thinking I’m cheating on her.”

“Are you?” Even though he knows Eduardo isn’t, because Eduardo’s not that kind of guy, even if he is the kind of guy who’ll let a girl he just met blow him in the bathroom two stalls away from his best friend who’s doing the same.

“No, you fuck, I’m not cheating on her.” He sounds irritated. Then he sighs, and Mark can see him rub his hands over his face. “I don’t know how I ended up in a relationship with her, but I’m not sleeping around.”

Mark knows exactly how Eduardo ended up in a relationship with Christy. “You wanted to get laid on a regular basis.”

“What?”

Maybe he’d forgotten to preface that as an answer to Eduardo’s question, or maybe it hadn’t even been a question. “How you ended up in a relationship with Christy. You wanted to get laid on a regular basis.”

“That’s - that’s cheap, man.”

“But it’s true.” He rearranges himself on the bed, crossing his legs. He glances over at Eduardo and sees his eyes are closed.

“Yeah,” Eduardo agrees, his voice barely a whisper. It’s almost quiet for a moment. Mark can hear the video game that’s being played in the living room, Sean’s female guests giggling helplessly. He wishes they’d leave. He wishes everyone would leave, except maybe for Eduardo, because Eduardo knows how to be quiet and let Mark be alone in his head. It’s something Sean doesn’t get. It’s why Mark bought a dozen pairs of noise-reducing headphones with Eduardo’s money.

Then Eduardo asks, “Hey, can I use your laptop? I want to check fares online before I go to the airport.”

Something twinges inside Mark. Hadn’t Eduardo heard what he said about needing a business advisor here, in the house? “But you just got here.”

“I’ve seen what I need to see, heard what I need to hear, and now I should go back.”

That - no. He could maybe still convince Eduardo to stay. Tomorrow, after they’ve both gotten some serious sleep. Mark’s not big on the whole ‘sleep on it advice’, but he knows Eduardo is.

“Come on, you can stay the night,” Mark presses. He shifts so that his knee touches Eduardo’s hip, just briefly. “You can go back to New York tomorrow.”

“That’s - it is tomorrow.”

“Then you can go back later. But not right now.”

“Why do you care? It sounds like you’ve got it all lined up out here, without me,” Eduardo says, irritably, and sits up, his whole body angled away from Mark.

Mark doesn’t move. “I care because - I miss you.” It’s the truth, and Eduardo should know that, should know by now that Mark thinks lying is stupid.

“You miss me? Mark, you never call. We hardly talk. Eighty-five percent of the conversations we have are about Facebook, via Facebook. Do you know what that’s like for someone like me, who likes to talk to his friends face-to-face? I get that you’d rather pour your heart out to LiveJournal, fine, whatever. But you can’t say you miss me after you’ve spent half the summer forgetting I exist.”

Eduardo stops talking suddenly, like he doesn’t want to go any further. Mark feels his whole body tense, and then Eduardo stands up, still not looking at him.

“Wardo. Sit down.” Then he adds, “Please.”

“You suck at emotions,” Eduardo mumbles, but he flops back down on the bed.

That’s no lie. “Yeah.”

“You don’t know how to be a nice person.”

“Yeah.” And Mark does agree. He doesn’t know things like that - he doesn’t know how to behave like an actual CEO, one who actually has to deal with people and business and the press. Giving an interview to the _Crimson_ is one thing, but he doesn’t pretend know how to do it in the real world.

It’s part of why he’d wanted so much to have Sean to be a part of Facebook.

“I can’t -” he starts. Stops. Refocuses. “There are times when I can’t separate friendship from business. And there are times when I can’t do anything but separate them.”

“And what sort of time is it right now?”

“I yelled at you. I’m sorry. It wasn’t personal.”

Eduardo doesn’t reply.

“Wardo, it wasn’t personal,” Mark repeats.

“It feels personal when the guy yelling at me is my friend.” He says it quietly, so quietly it’s almost drowned out by the ghost missiles in the video game and the sudden, drunken whoop of one of the girls. “What are you doing out here, Mark?”

“What?”

“What are you doing in California?”

“I’m growing the company,” Mark says immediately.

There’s shouting from the living room, Sean’s voice, the girls’, and then Dustin yelling for everyone to _just shut the fuck up, I’m trying to code_ , and Eduardo says dryly, “It sure doesn’t seem like it tonight.”

“They’re just having fun,” Mark mutters, knowing it doesn’t sound all that convincing. “Sean does work, Wardo. He does. I know right now it sounds like all he does is party, but it’s one in the morning - aren’t we allowed to have a good time, sometimes?.”

His reply is quick. “Are _you_ having fun?”

Mark hugs his knees, digging his heels into the edge of the bed. “I am.”

“Tell me about how you’re having fun.”

So Mark tells him about the fencing contests, and the zip-line to the pool, and the all-night tequila-and-brainstorming sessions.

“That’s still work, Mark, do you even get out of the house?”

“Sometimes Dustin and I go to the movies.”

“Yeah? What was the last one?”

Mark doesn’t remember, because he’d spent the whole time thinking about how to best code The Wall. Eduardo laughs when he says this, and smacks his knee. Then he looks at Mark with wide eyes. His expression seems sort of sad. “You’re not coming back to school, are you,” he whispers, and Mark can tell it’s not a question.

“It’s moving too fast for me to come back,” Mark replies honestly, because he’s already signed an extension on the lease. “At least for a semester. Longer, if - if we get the Thiel investment.”

Eduardo makes a disgusted noise. Or, at least, Mark thinks it sounds disgusted. He’s not sure. He looks at Eduardo, trying to figure it out.

“What, Mark?” Eduardo asks. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“All - weird, I don’t know.” Eduardo sucks in a breath. “Does this mean anything to you?”

“Does what mean anything to me?” Mark queries in response, confused as to what Eduardo is referring.

“Our friendship.”

“What?”

“Am I just a - a blank check, a bank account?”

“Wardo... what?” Mark doesn’t know how they’ve gotten on this topic. No previous topic had seemed to even suggest that it would lead here, so it feels - random. “Of course not - no, of course not.”

“Because that’s what it feels like.”

Mark’s not sure how to respond to that, or refute it or whatever, so he ignores it. “There’s a chance I won’t be coming back to school at all,” he says quietly, because it needs to be said. “Especially - especially if things go the way I’ve planned, if we can keep the expansion going.”

Eduardo looks over at him, and Mark counts at least three distinct expressions, moods, whatever. Not that he has a clue what they all mean. He knows one has to be Eduardo just not understanding that he doesn’t care about graduating from Harvard, because Eduardo has no choice but to graduate.

Then Eduardo grabs the laptop and opens it.

“What are you doing?” Mark asks.

“Looking for flights.”

“I thought we’d agreed you’d stay.”

Eduardo shakes his head, doesn’t look up.

Mark was sure he’d been straightforward. “Have I been unclear?”

“No, Mark. You’ve been perfectly clear.” Eduardo glances at him, quickly, then goes back to the Expedia site or whatever it is he’s got up. “Do you mind if I nap in here for a while, if there’s not one that leaves in the next couple hours?”

“Of course I don’t mind,” Mark says automatically. Then he realizes he’s been dismissed and blinks. “Oh. I’ll just - leave you to it, I guess.”

He goes back into the living room, closing the bedroom door and then the hallway door behind him. He notices the sudden silence first, then realizes Sean and the girls are no longer in the house. Dustin is still hunched over the laptop by the patio doors, the rest of the interns typing away in the kitchen.

He must stand there a while, because the next thing he registers is Dustin saying, “Mark? What is it?”

“Nothing,” he says immediately. “It’s nothing.”

*

“Mark?” Gretchen asks. He moves his gaze from Eduardo’s stony face to her questioning one, and Eduardo spins around in his chair to stare out the window. Mark is sure he only does it so they can’t look at each other any more.

“It wasn’t a meeting,” he says.

“You told Eduardo he might be left behind?”

“The company needed an active CFO.” He spins the legal pad around, sketches a business card. Writes Gretchen’s name on it. Writes _best lawyer bitch in the world_ underneath. Crosses it out, because he knows she’s just doing her job.

She’s doing what Eduardo pays her to do.

Eduardo is staring hard out the window. Mark feels like they’ve been in this room for months. They probably have. He reaches up and pulls on his tie, feeling slightly caged, then spins the legal pad around another ninety degrees and draws a series of matching triangles.

“Did you tell Mr. Saverin how you felt?” Gretchen asks.

Sy interrupts with, “Gretchen -”

“I did,” Mark says, overriding whatever Sy’s going to say, because he had and he doesn’t care that this is on the record. “But he didn’t seem able to think of Facebook as something that could exist on it’s own, as something bigger than my Kirkland dorm room, so I don’t think he understood what I meant.”

“I understood perfectly well,” Eduardo snaps, his voice sharp and low. Their eyes meet via reflection, the shiny glass perfectly smooth. Outside, there’s not a cloud in the sky.

“You didn’t,” Mark says, pointing at him. “You seemed to misunderstand everything I said that night.”

Eduardo spins around and glares at him through narrowed eyes. Mark shrugs at him.

“Sy,” and he looks over in time to see Gretchen gesturing at Sy as she says, “would you please control your client?”

“Mark,” his lawyer admonishes.

Mark taps his pen on the paper. Sy doesn’t need to speak to him as if he’s an unruly child. “I honestly don’t think he understood,” he repeats calmly. He’d been perfectly clear the first time. Gretchen is just doing this for effect. But he can play that game, too. “How could he be an active CFO if he was all the way across the country?”

“I was looking for _advertisers_ -”

“Gentlemen!” Sy snaps, and Mark feels a small twinge of satisfaction as Eduardo cringes back in his chair.

“He’s the one that couldn’t separate business from friendship,” he mutters to Sy.

“I’m doing a spectacular job of it right now, I think,” Eduardo hisses. His eyes are dark as he glares directly at Mark. Gretchen lays a hand on his arm.

“I think perhaps it’s time for a break,” she says quietly, closing her binder. “Back in ten?”

“Back in ten,” Sy agrees, already pushing away from the table.

Mark leans back his chair, dropping his pen down onto the paper. He makes no effort to hide how he watches Eduardo stand and leave the room. It only takes a few moments for everyone to filter out, and then he’s alone.

Or so he thinks. From somewhere behind him, Eduardo says, “I knew what you meant then, and I know what you’re doing now,” but when Mark swivels to reply, there’s only the line of glass doors, and his own reflection staring back at him.

**Author's Note:**

> This was yet another story that was meant to go one way and ended up somewhere else entirely. I think I just like to write about Mark being a douchebag, honestly.


End file.
